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Records Management – 911Case Study on Information Retention and Retrievability

Rachel VerdugoMarch 23, 2010

Williamsburg, VA

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Records Management – 911 and Workshop on Four Case Studies - Overview

Case study workshop

Case study objectives

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“911” Call From A Frantic Employee Of A Company

Employee: Help! I need important records!!

Data Manager: Please calm down Sir. What is the records title?

Employee: Title?? Ugh. It is something like Specification IDKNOW

Data Manager: Sir, Do you have the date or the custodian of the record? You

need to provide me with more metadata.

Employee: Can’t you just Google the name in the database? I need it now!

Data Manager: Sir. You need to remain calm. Which repository was the

document placed in?

Employee: The last time I saw the document was on Gawn Astray’s e-mail.

Data Manager: I will see what I can do however it may take a few weeks to

look into it. I can’t make you any promises on whether I will be able to retrieve

your document.

Employees spend 1.7 hours a day finding a documents

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Case Study - Workshop

Case Studies are real situations that occurred from various companies

Four Case Studies:

1. Company is notified of a legal hold

2. Program Manager requests all first articles for 2 years

3. Company has an initiative to destroy paper records

4. Company is creating standard metrics (meta data)

Case Studies will provide a problem solving opportunity around records

management application

Each group will be able to develop a solution from their own work

experience and group collaboration

Real situations that need records management solutions

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Work Shop - Case Studies Objective

We will break-out into 8 groups:

Each group is given a case study and will have 45 minutes to work on the

questions and to create a go forward plan

Each group will have 15 minutes to share results of each case study

Summarize results from the case studies from each group

Workshop is to share and collaborate on lessons learned

Leverage ideas and share experiences

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ANY QUESTIONS?BREAK-OUT INTO GROUPS

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“911” Records Management Court Cases Zubulake v. UBS Warburg LLC

Jury awarded the plaintiff a total of $29 million in compensatory and punitive damagesUBS Warburg LLC failed to preserve all potentially discoverable data

(UBS produced 100 pages of documents as opposed to Ms. Zubulake produced 450 pages of documents)

Counsel failed to communicate a “litigation hold“ to all key players

In 2002, five major Wall Street brokerages (Duetsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Salomon Smith Barney, and U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray) agreed to pay a total $8.25 million in fines ($1.65 million each) for improperly storing e-mails

Failure to produce records (digital) can results in finesE-mail was a main source of the business records and should have been both safe

and accessible

Information by James G. Barr

Increase in court cases due to lack of Company e-mail retention policies and procedures

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Why is Records Management Urgent to our Business?

Records are evidence of the company’s operations, functions, decisions, organization policies, and procedures.

Over retention of documents can cost additional storage, IT assets, and litigation for a company

Unclear retention periods may cause: Lost time - Where is that information?Loss of knowledge - Why didn’t we learn that lesson last time? Confusion - Is this the final report? Control weaknesses - Who approved that Gate package? Did he

have authority to sign that package?

Company policy should state the retention period of documents and should be part of required training

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What Are the Benefits of Proper Records Management?

Benefits:Minimize litigation risksPreserve the corporate memoryProtect intellectual propertySafeguard electronic records not stored in traditional repositoriesSafeguard vital informationReduce operating costsImprove efficiency and productivityEnsure regulatory complianceSupport better management decision making

Through complete metrics suites Through aggregation for Knowledge Management purposes

Legal holds are compliance driven and can be costly